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9/30/10

Tony Curtis, R.I.P.

From dressing in drag to posing nude for his 80th birthday, Tony Curtis truly was a defiant one.

He overcame early typecasting as a lightweight pretty boy to become a serious actor in such films as "Sweet Smell of Success," "Spartacus" and "The Defiant Ones," the latter earning him an Academy Award nomination.

He resisted obsolescence, continually reshaping himself and taking lesser roles to find steady work in a business that prizes youth. He subdued alcohol and drug addictions, lived through six marriages and five divorces, and found peace with a new art as a painter.